Death in a Cold Place: Burial on Attu

To recapture Attu in the Aleutian Islands from the Japanese in June 1943, U.S. military forces suffered extreme casualties, losing 549 dead and another 1,148 wounded—ranking, in proportion to the troops engaged, as one of the costliest battles waged in the Pacific theater, second only to the Battle of Iwo Jima.

Robert L. Sherrod, a war correspondent for Time, shared the human cost of the Aleutian battle with the magazine's readers in an article, “Burial in the Aleutians,” published in the June 28, 1943, issue. The article examined how those who fell were laid to rest on Attu.

For most of a night, caterpillar tractors towed trailers over the valleys and plateaus between Attu’s high peaks, bringing 125 dead Americans to be buried in the Little Falls Cemetery—named for a nearby waterfall and one of two graveyards on the island.

Most of the dead had been killed in a Japanese banzai charge and had been “horribly mangled by bayonets and rifle butts,” Sherrod wrote. (The Americans who collected their dead with “tight-lipped calm,” later vomited as they gathered for burial the 1,000 Japanese who died in the attack.)

The sudden influx of bodies had overwhelmed the graves registration company, which augmented its numbers by dragooning clerks and truck drivers for burial duty. “Their reactions are sober,” said Sherrod. “There is no excitement at this scene of wholesale death.”

Perhaps trying to offer solace to families who lost loved ones in the Aleutian campaign, Sherrod wrote:

“No nation handles its casualties as carefully as we do. The 125 who lie in rows at the edge of the crude cemetery were examined meticulously. A medical officer (Captain Louvera B. Schmidt of Salem, Ore.) recorded the cause of death and the number and type of wounds as each body was unclothed. Members of the graves registration company cut open each pocket and placed the personal effects of the dead in clean wool socks for dispatch to the quartermaster depot at Kansas City. One identification tag has been left on each body, the other nailed to the cross which will be placed above the grave until a larger metal plate can be stamped. The graves are laid out in perfect geometrical pattern; they have been charted so that no mistake can be made in locating any body.

Three sets of fingerprints were made from the hands of each dead man. One set stays with the man’s military unit, two will be sent to the Adjutant General in Washington [D.C.]. (If a soldier’s “dog tags” are missing and his personal effects carry no absolute identification, his body is not buried until some men from his unit have made positive identification.

After fingerprinting, the bodies were carried through the identification tent and wrapped in khaki blankets tied at three places: around the neck, the waist and the feet.”
 

Bulldozers dug the graves because there was no time nor labor available to dig them with shovels. “The bulldozers plow back & forth until a space seven feet deep has been scooped out,” Sherrod said, “which is long enough to place eight bodies 18 inches apart. Then into the collective grave small one-foot deep individual graves are scooped out by shovel. Thus, each man lies with seven of his comrades."

Three chaplains conducted the burial service, singing verses of “Rock of Ages” over the clanking and chuffing of dozens of tractors working on the muddy roads and beaches a few hundred yards away. Sherrod noted that Lieutenant Colonel Reuben E. Curtis, a Mormon from Salt Lake City, Utah, opened his khaki-colored Bible and read: “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. . . . O God, great and omnipotent judge of the living and the dead, before whom we all are to appear after this short life to render an account of our works, lift our hearts, we pray Thee.”

Close by the graves, two buglers closed the service by playing “Taps.” The chaplains placed their caps back on their heads, Sherrod reported, and the graveyard bulldozer "huff puffs again, pushing mounds of cold Attu earth over the khaki-clad bodies of eight U.S. soldiers."

A young lieutenant spoke for many on Attu when he said, after looking at the bodies lined up for burial at the cemetery’s edge, “I wonder if those sons of bitches holding up war production back home wouldn’t change their minds if they could look at this.”